A hater's take on the Jim Tressel appointment

Plus some chatter about how our statewide officials sliced the electorate over lunch at the Downtown Athletic Club, while P.G. Sittenfeld (and by extension, Larry Householder) lost in federal court.

As you may have heard, Governor Grandpa Sleepy Tea has appointed former Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel as the next lieutenant governor.

That came after Tressel refused the appointment to the United States Senate to replace J.D. Vance.

“He didn’t come begging like the rest,” said one in-the-know Republican.

I cut a video Monday explaining why I believe the nomination to be horrible news for the notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy.

Sure, Tressel will be 74 in 2026.

Still, as a Youngstown follower pointed out on Twitter, Tressel has a habit of soft-launching jobs to see if he wants a bigger bite of the apple, like his stints as a quality control coach for the Indianapolis Colts or Vice President at the University of Akron.

Tressel wouldn’t need to run for two terms to deny Ramaswamy. He’d only need to run for a single term since Ramaswamy’s ego would only be satiated by becoming the president.

As I wrote last week, according to one well-connected source, Republican Congressmen Max Miller and Jim Jordan have told anybody who will listen that Ramaswamy earning the Trump endorsement isn’t nearly as done and dusted as the conman believes.

It’s hard to think that Trump, who has always had a homoerotic relationship with successful athletes and coaches, would back Ramaswamy if Tressel entered the race.

But those are all arguments for another day. For today, let’s deal with the present.

As I wrote in September 2022, Mike DeWine, for all his flaws, is likely the best governor we will have for the rest of our lives. But now we’re in a position where if something—God forbid—happens to the man, we’ll be stuck with a football coach who all but admitted during his press conference that he’s unqualified for the job.

And yet, I’d be lying if I said I felt angry about the pick because one of my most embarrassing traits is that I’m a Buckeye football fan—the kind my saintly mother indoctrinated at a very young age.

And one political truth is that people can’t hold contradictory views about other people in their minds. Not for very long, anyway.

I was in my formative years when Tressel was at the height of his powers, and I defended him during and after the faux “scandal” that sent him packing. It’s hard for me to treat him like another Republican intent on making this state worse. That’s how deep the Buckeye propaganda runs in my mind.

But Tressel has entered the arena. And I will treat him like any other combatant the next time we cross paths at the Statehouse because he hasn’t covered himself in glory in recent years.

Any criticism should start with his tenure as Youngstown State president from 2013 to 2023, in which, like any other Republican university president, he slashed programs and fired faculty.

But he also attended clandestine meetings to plot the state takeover of Youngstown Schools by installing a “CEO.”

From wfmj.com in 2015:

YSU President Jim Tressel spoke out Tuesday about meetings concerning the future of Youngstown City Schools that some have labeled as secret.

21 News asked Tressel about a panel that included him and six other members who are credited with helping formulate state legislation that will allow the appointment of a CEO who will have sweeping powers to reorganize Youngstown's failing city schools.

[…]

Citing the secrecy allegations, Youngstown School Board President Brenda Kimble went so far as toe say that the board would consider suing the state over the new Youngstown school plan.

Tressel is denying the secrecy claims and said, "Minutes were taken at the meetings. You don't take minutes when you're doing secrets. It never felt to me like it was a secrecy thing."

What could go wrong with a bunch of Republican hobgoblins privately plotting a hostile takeover of a predominantly Black school district?

In their minds, this half-baked idea would undoubtedly lead to national glory as an educational “miracle” under Governor John Kasich after area luminaries discovered one simple trick of running a school district like a business.

It’s a horrible idea that led to predictable results. The FBI raided the school district in an ongoing investigation.

From Mahoning Matters in 2024:

A media alert from the FBI’s Cleveland Office says they are seeking information about any individuals, vendors, or contractors who may have received payments from Youngstown City Schools for services not performed or goods not provided or used, or vendors who received funds from the District while paying kickbacks (or “finder’s fees) to District employees or associates of District employees, from 2019 to the present.

Ah! Well! It turns out that solving “failing” schools is a lot harder than handing the reins to some Business Freak. Who could have guessed?

You probably won’t be shocked to learn there has been no outrage over this scandal in Columbus because the perpetrators were Republicans, and the victims were poor Black kids in Youngstown.

For his part, Tressel had nothing further to say about his involvement after the FBI raid. But he stayed in the education field and moved on to his next racket by joining the board of LifeWise Academy.

LifeWise, you might remember, is the billionaire-funded group recruiting public school students to Bible study in the middle of the school day. After several school districts booted the program from their campuses due to liability concerns and other issues, LifeWise used its political connections to cry to the State Legislature, which promptly passed a statewide mandate forcing school districts to allow time for so-called “religious instruction.”

DeWine signed that bill into law last month.

From Cole Behrens of dispatch.com:

The [new LifeWise headquarters] will feature a "Tressel Coaching Hall," named in honor of the former OSU coach, to train LifeWise teachers from across the country. [LifeWise CEO Joel] Penton is a former OSU defensive lineman and played under Tressel. Penton said he asked him if he would allow his name on the room for training.

"(Tressel has) been an encouragement and a champion to a degree," Penton said in 2024. "He's not super publicly tied to (LifeWise) but I asked him, I said, 'Can we honor you by putting your name on the training room,' and he said "Sure, but call it a coaching room.'"

Yesterday, House Finance Chairman Brian Stewart took exception to the Dispatch’s coverage of Tressel’s involvement with LifeWise:

Only in the Ohio Statehouse can reporting the facts be considered proof of bias. Tressel hasn’t hidden his involvement in a group pushing for religious instruction during public school days.

But to Stewart’s point… Tressel has been silent on his views on immigration, law enforcement, job creation, healthcare and taxes. However, we can probably guess where he stands on all those issues, considering he supported Bernie Moreno for Senate by headling a fundraiser with Tommy Tuberville, easily the dumbest Senator in America:

From Cleveland Signal reporter Andrew Tobias on Twitter.

In a way, Tressel is the non-political version of DeWine: An aw-shucks, grandfatherly bumpkin right until it’s time to cut somebody’s throat.

Tressel went from Youngstown State to Ohio State while coaching. He then entered higher education and became a university president despite not having a doctorate and having only two years of experience as a university vice president—a job he got despite having no experience in higher education outside of a football field.

After dallying around Republican politics, he’s now lept into the Lieutenant Governor’s office without ever running for office. And all he has to do is say, “I want to be governor,” to clear the Republican field in 2026.

That isn’t something that happens by divine providence. It happens because a man is cold, calculating, and ambitious.

You may not like it. I certainly don’t. But you have to respect it, which I certainly do.

Our statewide officials sliced the pie in public, according to one patriot in the field